


tried to write me off

by staygame



Category: Lovelyz
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Hazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24456853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staygame/pseuds/staygame
Summary: See, if there's one thing that Mijoo hates more than ridiculous, power-tripping seniors, it's being told that she can't do something.
Relationships: Lee Mijoo/Lee Soojung | Baby Soul
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Girl Group Jukebox (Round 2)





	tried to write me off

**Author's Note:**

> this is a pseudo-SOTUS (2016) au, which means that it takes strong nods from the thai university system. if we can have aggressively american college aus, we can also have thai college aus right? relevant details - the gear is a SOTUS the series thing, but the actual SOTUS system of hazing is real and kind of problematic! university students in thailand wear uniforms, but engineering students get to wear these [short-sleeved jackets](https://torfight.tumblr.com/post/617639154252120064/arthit-tying-kongpobs-string-for-inkorns) after their first year. i kept the jackets because they are such an #iconic engineering bl thing.
> 
> Written for GG Jukebox Round 2, inspired by Bad Blood by Taylor Swift.

Mijoo is ten minutes late to the welcoming ceremony. This is in no way surprising—Mijoo's mother would routinely say she was more than a week late to her own birth. Ten minutes late, Mijoo reasons as she pushed through a group of students to reach the auditorium doors, is basically five minutes late, which basically isn't late at all. No one has probably even noticed.

The icy stares aimed at her from the five third years standing on the stage suggest otherwise. 

There's an empty spot next to Jisoo that Mijoo quickly sinks down into. Jisoo touches her fingers to her forehead, looking very much tired of Mijoo. "What?" Mijoo hisses.

"Freshman, were you unaware of our start time?" 

Mijoo hadn't noticed that one of the seniors had gotten down off the stage and made her way over to where Mijoo is sitting. She's short, her engineering jacket oversized on her petite frame, and her glare is surprisingly fierce.

"I'm sorry I was late," Mijoo apologizes. "I had to go to the registrar and then the bookstore and then I got lost and you know how it is." She says this in a breezy way, like _Oops! Happens to everyone, right?_

The senior does not look moved. "What's your name?" she asks, gesturing to Mijoo's chest.

"Oh," Mijoo says, realizing then that her nametag had gotten twisted at some point during her speed walking. She turns it around for the senior. "Lee Mijoo."

"Lee Mijoo," the girl repeats. "Don't make this mistake again."

One of the seniors on stage holds out a chain. "Who can tell me what this is?"

A few brown-nosing freshmans in the front row call out their answers. "That's right, it's a gear," the guy says. "The sacred symbol of our college of engineering. These gears are not simply given out. They are earned through the tests we will put you through in order for you to prove that you are worthy of being our juniors."

"These tests will challenge you physically and mentally, but they will also help you to bond with your fellow juniors, so that you learn to rely on each other."

"For your first task," the girl who'd called out Mijoo says, "you'll each be getting one of these." She holds up a small, blank notebook. "In it, we'd like you to collect the name of eight hundred engineering seniors."

A murmur ripples through the crowd. Mijoo and Jisoo glance at each other.

"And you'll have a week to do it," the girl finishes, smiling neatly down at them.

Mijoo stands up before she can stop herself or Jisoo can tug her back down to the floor. "That's ridiculous," she shouts. "A week for eight hundred signatures?"

"Do you have a problem, freshman?"

"That's most of the college," Mijoo points out. "You can't possibly expect that?"

"It's exactly what we expect," the girl says. "And if you can't do it, you might as well just leave now."

See, if there's one thing that Mijoo hates more than ridiculous, power-tripping seniors, it's being told that she can't do something. The girl's words trigger something inside Mijoo, her innate contrariness rearing up for a fight. "Oh, I'll do it. It's fucking absurd, but I'll do it."

The girl's eyes seem to cut through the hundreds of students and distance between them, as though Mijoo can feel the chilly stare against her skin. "I'll be waiting, then. Don't forget to get my signature too."

Six days in, Mijoo has nearly filled her notebook. It helps that she isn't shy about batting her eyelashes at seniors in exchange for their signatures. Some aren't so easy—a few seniors want bribes, drinks and food delivered to them before they'll put their pen to paper. Others are a little more wicked in their demands. Mijoo has danced in the middle of the cafeteria, carried a 10-kilo dumbbell to all of her classes for a day, and done a full, kneeling bow on the floor of the engineering building all for signatures.

"You know what I think?" Mijoo asks, flinging herself down into a chair. She is wearing what could best be described as ahjumma chic—floral harem pants, rubber boots, and a sun scarf around her neck. She'd gotten seven signatures for this outfit. "Public humiliation should be worth at least ten signatures."

Jisoo tugs off her plastic visor. "I don't know, these pants are pretty comfortable."

"You have visor hair," Mijoo points out.

Jisoo frowns and runs a hand through her hair. "At least the week is almost over. How many do we have left?"

"We're up to—" Mijoo thumbs through the notebook, adding up the newest additions. "692. Do the math for me. How many are left?"

"Hey," Jisoo interrupts, jabbing her elbow into Mijoo's side. "There are some of the head hazers. Go ask them."

A group of four of them have settled at one of the nearby tables with their lunch trays, the girl who'd called out Mijoo at the welcoming ceremony one of them. Just seeing her makes Mijoo prickle with annoyance. She shakes her head at Jisoo. "No way, you ask them first."

"You owe me," Jisoo says. When Mijoo looks at her, eyebrow cocked, Jisoo blinks rapidly, clearly trying to come up with a reason why Mijoo should owe her. "I paid for your lunch on Monday."

Mijoo groans. "Fine, whatever." When she stands, her rubber boots give an obnoxious squeak.

The other girl at the table is the first to notice when Mijoo schleps over. She laughs, her eyes sweetly sympathetic though her tone is anything but. "Soojung, look who came for your signature," she says, nudging the girl next to her.

Mijoo's enemy, _Soojung_ , looks up at her. "Lee Mijoo, I thought you might've forgotten about my signature."

"Just tell me what you want," Mijoo asks.

"I like the outfit," Soojung continues. She gestures to Mijoo's floral pants and deliberately clashing plaid shirt. "Is that designer, or?"

"Just tell me what you want," Mijoo repeats through gritted teeth. "Only in exchange for all four of you. For me and my friend."

Soojung taps a finger against her chin, making a big show of thinking. Finally, she asks, "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No."

"A girlfriend, then?" Soojung asks.

Mijoo resists the urge to roll her eyes. "No."

"Then you shouldn't mind giving out—what do you think?" Soojung directs this question to the table, as though Mijoo isn't even standing there. "Is kissing ten people enough?" She shifts her gaze back to Mijoo. "Kiss ten people in this cafeteria right now and we'll give you our signatures."

Mijoo scoffs. "It's cute that you think that's a challenge," she says, and it's true. Mijoo has kissed ten people in one night at a Hongdae club and she wasn't even getting anything out of that other than a good time. She walks away, flipping her hair over her shoulder as a parting _fuck you_.

"What did they say?" Jisoo asks when Mijoo approaches the table.

"Ten kisses for four signatures," Mijoo says.

Jisoo's "what?" is muffled under Mijoo's mouth as she plants a smacking kiss against Jisoo's lips. Mijoo doesn't have to look back to know that Soojung is watching her. She holds up her index finger and shouts, "That's one."

She's not a total pervert—she has the decency to ask her next eight victims before touching them, but Mijoo also knows that there are few engineering nerds who'd turn down the opportunity to kiss a hot girl, even one dressed like a _pojangmacha_ lady. After the fifth, there are brace-faced freshmen raising their hands to have Mijoo come over.

Holding up nine fingers, Mijoo approaches Soojung's table, walking behind her chair so that Soojung has to twist back to see her.

"You're missing one, freshman," Soojung says.

"I thought you might want to be last," Mijoo says, batting her eyelashes. Beside Soojung, one of the guys chokes on his water. "Since you seemed so eager to watch my public displays of affection."

"No thanks," Soojung says.

Mijoo reaches out. Soojung's cheek is soft under her hand, and for a moment, Mijoo forgets that her intention was to tease, because Soojung is really more lovely close up than she was expecting. She blinks away from the beauty mark under Soojung's mouth and says, "Are you sure? How often do pretty girls want to kiss you?"

Soojung bats Mijoo's hand away. "You'll have to find another victim," she says, scowling.

"Suit yourself."

All Mijoo has to do is survey the nearby tables to find her tenth recipient, a guy who has to wipe the sweat from his forehead before Mijoo leans in to kiss him. "That's ten," MIjoo says, and gives the guy an extra peck on the cheek for good measure. She turns to find Soojung hastily looking away.

It's taken her less than 15 minutes to finsh the challenge. If Soojung's intention was to humiliate Mijoo, then she didn't know that Mijoo's allergic to shame. Mijoo swings over to pick up Jisoo's notebook and drops them both in front of Soojung. 

"Signatures, please."

"Next week will be even harder," Soojung says as she scribbles down her name. "I wouldn't get cocky now if I were you."

As Mijoo walks away, she traces her thumb over the newest addition to her notebook. _Lee Soojung_. 

"The seniors are masochists," Mijoo says. "But you, Choi Hyojung, you are a saint."

Hyojung extends the two bags of frozen vegetables to Mijoo. "Do you need anything else while I'm up?" she asks.

"Cut off my legs," Jisoo says, hooking a hand around Hyojung's ankle. "I'm serious, do it."

That afternoon, the head hazers had made them do more than 100 squats out on the quad. Mijoo lost count somewhere after 122, not long before she'd toppled to the ground, her legs feeling like jelly. She hadn't made it to 150 like a few of the more athletic freshmen, but she'd lasted longer than a good chunk of the class on sheer stubbornness alone, glaring at Soojung the entire time.

Mijoo and Jisoo have been sprawled out on their living room floor since they got back, too weak to move.

"You know, the communications department seniors gave us all goodie bags and free pizza at our welcoming ceremony," Hyojung says, settling down on the floor next to them. Mijoo's mouth waters at the thought of pizza. "What's the deal with engineering anyway?"

Unlike Mijoo and Jisoo, who'd gone to high school together and transitioned automatically into roommates when it was time to move across Seoul for university, Hyojung had been a stranger a month ago. She was the most normal looking person who'd replied to their _looking for a third roommate_ post, bubbly and warm even over text. Since then, she's fit easily into their existing familiarity.

Mijoo adjusts the bags of broccoli on her sore thighs. "It's this whole tradition thing. They've been doing it for, like thirty years."

"Basically, we have to show that we are good little freshmen who are obedient to their orders, whatever they are," Jisoo says. "I guess it's supposed to help our class become more unified too. And it's all so they can give us the gear, which is—"

"The sacred symbol of our engineering department," Mijoo finishes with a great deal of sarcasm. She tilts her head back to look at Hyojung. "Wait, your seniors seriously haven't hazed you at all?"

Hyojung gives them a sheepish smile. "I mean, they made us do that thing where you stand on a tarp and then you have to flip the tarp while still standing on it, but no squats. Or abuse."

Condensation is already starting to spill down Mijoo's thighs. She's had a crick in her neck since having to carry around that stupid dumbbell and she knows that there will be fresh hell awaiting them tomorrow, if she can even stand long enough to make it there. She wonders what Soojung had to do as a freshman, if she'd had to be a senior's slave for the day or crawl through the mud to earn her gear. An errant thought crosses Mijoo's mind, the visual already forming before she realizes what she's imagining—she wonders if Soojung had to kiss anyone, and what she might've done if Mijoo had kissed her then in the cafeteria.

"Do you want a towel?" Hyojung asks, interrupting Mijoo's mental image. "Your broccoli is dripping."

"Soojung can keep her stupid gear," Mijoo mumbles, and then to Hyojung, "Yes, please."

Mijoo had gotten into university mostly on spite alone. It's just that—her older sister was the pride of the family. She was going to be a _doctor_ at Yonsei and Mijoo was expected to major in marketing or something and marry rich. They'd had to fill out a form during tenth grade to indicate their educational goals. Mijoo, only recently transplanted to Incheon, wrote down engineering because that's what her new friend Jisoo had written. Later, during their one-on-one meeting, her teacher had asked, with a kind of gentle tone like she was doing Mijoo a favor, "Why don't you think about something more attainable?" 

So, naturally, Mijoo devoted the next three years to studying and improving her CSAT score just to prove her teacher wrong. In the end, it wasn't SKY but she'd gotten into a good school and more importantly, she'd _done it_. 

In comparison, Mijoo figures, 54 laps around the track is nothing.

The freshman class had been 54 members short that morning. Mijoo couldn't blame anyone for playing hooky because she'd nearly done it herself, only dragged from bed by Jisoo and the promise of an iced Americano on the way to campus. The third years couldn't just let it go. "One of the goals of this initiation process is to unify your class," one of the guys had said, voice booming out across the soccer field where they'd gathered. "Because you are one unified class, you will all be punished for the mistakes of the few."

And so, under the heat of the early September sun, they began their 54 laps, and then one by one, they gave up.

The first few freshmen had given up only 10 laps in, collapsing onto the soccer field with wheezing, asthmatic breaths. Jisoo made it to 16 before flinging herself at the grass with a dramatic, "Go on without me!" aimed at Mijoo.

By the halfway mark, there are only 22 of them remaining. Mijoo is barely jogging at this point, her feet shuffling along the asphalt in short, heavy steps. She thinks about those videos of competitive walking from the Olympics and it makes her laugh, which makes a classmate shout, "Mijoo, are you losing it?" as he passes her.

There is a stitch in her side and there's sweat running between her tits, but fuck it, she's not giving up. As she rounds the bend, she can feel the hazers looking at her, and it propels Mijoo forward. She picks up her pace, taking in a breath that burns her lungs, knees lifting and feet pushing off the ground. And then, almost immediately, she's dealt a blow to her hubris. 

Mijoo's foot comes down wrong, landing on the outer edge of her sneaker. Her ankle rolls and she topples to the ground. Another freshman running not far behind nearly trips over her, catching himself just before impact. Tears immediately well up in Mijoo's eyes as pain shoots up her ankle. 

Soojung is the first to reach her. Mijoo looks up from inspecting her skinned knee and Soojung is standing over her, eyes wide and panicked. "Are you okay?"

"Fuck, do I look okay?" Mijoo mumbles. She pushes herself up on her uninjured left leg, but when she puts her right foot down, testing the weight she can hold, her ankle burns with pain. 

"Let me help you," Soojung says, her arm coming around to brace Mijoo's waist. 

"I've got it," Mijoo protests, but when she tries to take a step forward, she nearly stumbles again, only Soojung's support stopping her from collapsing. 

"Clearly not," Soojung says. "Let me take you to get it looked at."

Jisoo appears then, holding a bottle of water for Mijoo. "I can take her."

"I'm her senior," Soojung says in a tone that says she's not to be argued with. "I'm responsible for her. You stay here."

Mijoo takes the water bottle, shooting Jisoo a confused grimace over her shoulder as Soojung leads them away. 

A half hour later and Mijoo's swollen ankle is elevated on a stack of pillows while she waits to be taken for X-rays. She's been given a handful of aspirin to take the edge off, but pain still radiates up her leg if she so much as shifts the wrong way. 

The doctor had asked her where it hurt and how it'd happened, and Mijoo had explained that her right angle had been weaker ever since her bad sprain a few years ago. He'd given her a short lecture on proper rehabilitation before scribbling something into her chart and telling the nurse to get her set up with the X-ray tech.

A few minutes of silence pass after he leaves and Mijoo shuts her eyes, her exhaustion hitting her all at once.

Then, Soojung speaks up. "If you told us you had an injury, we wouldn't have made you run."

Mijoo cracks an eyelid to look at Soojung. She looks tense, her fingers tightly gripping the chair's armrests. Mijoo wonders if the head hazers will get in trouble for sending a student to the hospital. Serves them right. "Would you really have let me out of it?" she asks. "Don't lie."

"You could've stopped earlier."

"I'm an O blood type, no way I could've stopped," Mijoo says.

Soojung smiles, then seems to catch herself and she schools her expression back into something more neutral. It's a shame, Mijoo thinks as she lets her head fall back against the pillow. Soojung looks better when she smiles. 

The head hazers are punished by sitting out a week while a group of fourth year students take over. Maybe it's because the administration is watching them carefully following the running laps incident, but the fourth years seem to go a little easy. They plant trees around the engineering building, practice class cheers out on the soccer field, and spend a whole day moving desks from the middle school campus.

Despite the break from grueling physical activity and verbal abuse from the third years, Mijoo maybe, kind of feels Soojung's absence.

"Why do you look more bummed now than when you twisted your ankle running laps?" Hyojung asks her one night when they get back from cheer practice. 

"She misses her girlfriend," Jisoo teases. 

"I don't miss her," Mijoo insists as she strips down to her sports bra. "I just thrive on conflict. You know that."

"Thrive on conflict or thrive on sexual tension?" Jisoo asks. Mijoo throws her sweaty shirt at her. 

Mijoo does not miss Soojung, because she would never miss someone who, after being reinstated back to head hazer, makes them memorize a list of 30 menial facts about the college of engineering and won't let anyone leave until each freshman can recite all 30. This, after making them plank for 5 minutes. 

"Initial enrollment in the chemical engineering department was 39," Mijoo recites to herself. The freshmen are not allowed to help each other study, each of them scattered around the soccer field with their fact sheets. They've gone through three rounds of the quiz already. "The first head of the electrical engineering department was Choi Hyungmo." 

"Having some trouble?" Soojung asks. She's standing above Mijoo, dangling her gear from her hand. "How do you expect to earn your gear like this?"

"Maybe I won't earn it," Mijoo says. She blames Jisoo, the one who'd made the dumb joke in the first place and put the idea in Mijoo's head, for what she says next. "Maybe I'll just make you my girlfriend, and then you'll just have to share everything with me." 

It's worth it to see Soojung's arm go slack, the hand holding her gear dropping to her side. Her eyes bulge out and she is very, obviously flustered when she says, "Well that's not going to happen." 

Soojung walks away before Mijoo can get the last word.

Four weeks, enough squats that Mijoo swears her ass better be noticeably rounder, and one capture the flag event where the seniors make them all convinced, for a hot minute, that they've failed to meet the demands and will not earn their gears later, and the freshman class has survived their hazing. 

Their reward is a trip to Gapyeong. On the first long weekend in October, the freshmen are piled onto charter buses and driven an hour and a half out of the city. Mijoo sits next to Jisoo and then, after polishing off a bag of tteokbokki chips, falls asleep on Jisoo's shoulder for the remainder of the ride. She wakes up only as the bus turns, bright autumn foliage on either side of the bus as it winds up a mountain road. 

The pension is a sprawling property situated on the mountainside. Mijoo steps off the bus and stretches her arms over her head, sucking in a deep breath of fresh air. It's not quite like the countryside that she'd grown up in before moving to Incheon, but it's familiar enough that dredges up a bit of homesickness in her chest.

She shakes off the ache by throwing her arms around whatever classmate is closest to her, which turns out to be Seongyoon from her statistics class. Perhaps it's a testament to the reputation that Mijoo has created for herself that he doesn't even seem fazed by the sudden intrusion. He just pats her, a bit awkwardly, on the shoulder. 

When Mijoo steps back, she finds Soojung watching her from a few feet away.

"What?" Mijoo asks.

Soojung frowns and turns back to the other third years. 

The rest of the day is spent doing team building activities. There's a scavenger hunt around the pension property, a blindfolded race across the parking lot, and small group activities where they're divided into teams for challenges. Mijoo's team comes in last place (through no fault of her own, to be clear) and is responsible for preparing the side dishes for dinner. All 25 of them spread out in the largest kitchen to chop cucumbers and radishes for banchan, while the fourth year volunteers grill massive amounts of beef and samgyeopsal outside. 

They gather for dinner around the row of long picnic tables that stretch out across the entire length of the backyard. As Mijoo eats, laughing with Jisoo and the new friends she's made, it hits her. That's the point of all this. She never would've talked to the two boys sitting across from her if they hadn't jointly suffered the torture of running laps, if they hadn't shit talked the head hazers under their breath after being made to plank. Sure, she could've done without some of the pain, but the assholes had done it. The seniors had united them. 

"Motherfuck," she says, apropos of nothing. 

"What?" Jisoo asks. 

Mijoo shakes her head. "Don't worry about it." 

"Do you think we'll get our gears tonight?" one of the boys across the table asks. He looks down to where the third and fourth years are gathered at one table. 

"Have you heard what the real meaning of the gear is?" the other one asks, wiggling his eyebrows. 

"What?" Mijoo asks. 

"One of the seniors told me that the gear is supposed to represent your heart," he explains "So when you give your gear to someone else, someone you like, you're asking them to take care of your heart." 

"That's really romantic," Jisoo says. She nudges Mijoo with her elbow, but before she can make any jokes, Mijoo elbows her back. 

It's not until the next evening that they get their gears. It's just before sunset, flickering lanterns set up across the pension yard to light the ceremony. The five head hazers, flanked by the five previous head hazers, stand in front of them. 

"Do you remember what we told you during our welcoming ceremony?" One of the guy hazers asks. The crowd murmurs back their agreement. "The gear is the sacred symbol of the college of engineering. It represents the idea that you are part of a system. Together, these gears run the college. If one gear fails, the whole system fails. We have to support and rely on each other to keep the system running. You are more than an individual. You are part of this great system."

"We told you on that first day that these gears are not given out. You have to earn one," the other girl says. "Well, today we can officially say that each of you has earned one. We would like to present them to you now."

They're divided into lines behind each of the third and fourth years. Mijoo doesn't know if it's fate or dumb luck that she ends up in Soojung's line. She watches as Soojung gently presses the gear into each student's hands, saying something quiet enough that Mijoo can't hear it even when she's the next person in line.

She steps up. Soojung's hair is in a high ponytail but strands of her hair have slipped free, framing her face and catching the fading sunlight. Her normally stern expression has softened. 

Mijoo offers out her palms and Soojung cups them in one hand, the other placing a gear into Mijoo's grasp. Her hand is warm and a little sweaty.

"You've earned this," she tells Mijoo. 

"What if I don't want this one?" Mijoo asks. 

A look of confusion crosses Soojung's face. "You don't want—" she starts to ask. 

"What if I want yours?" Mijoo says, before her remaining brain cells can catch up with her. "You can keep mine instead. You know, the real meaning." 

Then, Soojung smiles, a dimple forming in her cheek. "Who told you that, freshman?" she asks. She presses the gear more firmly into Mijoo's hands, but she's still smiling, so Mijoo supposes that's a good sign. "How about you keep this one for now and check back again later."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Mijoo warns her. Her chest feels all fluttery, a mix of adrenaline and what she now realizes is a crush. 

"I never promised anything," Soojung says. 

"But you know I love a challenge," Mijoo says, winking. 

Soojung heaves a sigh. "You're holding up the line, Lee Mijoo." 

Mijoo pockets her gear and turns around, but over her shoulder, she shouts, "I'm coming back for it, I swear!"

⚙️

**Author's Note:**

> \- "writer-nim," you ask, "would mijoo really major in engineering?" IT'S FOR THE AU......  
> \- sorry if bbsoul is too harsh or mean here! absolute power corrupts absolutely or something  
> \- jiae is one of the head hazers i just never managed to make it come up  
> \- don't haze people, mijoo's views are not my own  
> \- title from the bad blood remix


End file.
